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THE JUSTICE OF 
RUMANIA'S CAUSE 



By 



A. W. A. LEEPER 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 



MCHXVn 



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THE JUSTICE OF 
RUMANIA'S CAUSE 



By 

A. W. A. LEEPER 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 



MCMXVII 



Mo ' 



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e Justice of Rumania's Cause. 



The moral significance of Rumania's inter- 
vention in the great war has probably been 
understood less fully than any other important 
event which has taken place since August 1914. 
Even among Rumania's allies, welcome as Ru- 
mania's help was to them, and well disposed 
as they were to give her their help in return, 
there was lacking adequate knowledge of the 
vital issues for democracy and freedom at stake 
in Rumanian lands. Among countries then 
neutral there was probably even less understand- 
ing of the questions at issue. For instance, in 
one of the foremost papers of the Anglo-Saxon 
world we find the following passage : — 

"In at least two minor respects they 
[the terms enunciated in the Allies' Note to 
President Wilson] are wholly immoral, in that 
they contemplate the seizure of territory that 
never belonged to Italy or Roumania in order 
to pay the bribes that these two eminently 
sordid Governments exacted as their price for 
entering the war." 

[New York World, Jan. 12.) 

" Wholly immoral " ; " never belonged to 
Rumania " ; " these eminently sordid Govern- 
ments " ; " their price for entering the war " 
— let us analyse shortly the justice of these 
remarks in the light of the history of the 

3 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

Rumanian race, of Rumania's position to-day 
and of her future prospects. 



The Historical Rights and Wrongs of 
THE Rumanian Race, 

What is " Rumania " ? Who are the " Ru- 
manians " ? So many false and misleading state- 
ments have been made by partisan writers 
about the origins and constitution of the Ru- 
manian race, so often a purely arbitrary and 
restricted meaning is given to the term 
" Rumania," that it is worth while to point out 
clearly the full and proper signification of the 
two names. Modern "Rumania" is a term of 
barely 70 years' usage. Formed by the union 
of the two principalities of Wallachia and Mol- 
davia, in 1859, the kingdom of Rumania includes 
only a part of the Rumanian race. Over a million 
Rumans live in the old Moldavian, since 1812 
Russian, province of Bessarabia. A quarter of 
a million inhabit Bukovina, which the Habsburg 
Empress seized in 1775. Small fragments ot 
the race are to be found in N.E. Serbia, in S.W. 
Macedonia, and Thessaly. But by far the greater 
part of " unredeemed " Rumania is still governed 
by the Hungarian Cro\Mi. Hungarian official 
statistics (1910) give the number of Rumans 
in Hungary as 2,949,032. This is a minimum 
estimate. Hungarian census estimates are no- 
toriously " touched up." Rumanian writers 
show good grounds for the belief that there 

4 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

are at least 3,935,120 Rumans in Hungary, and 
probably considerably more than 4,000,000. 
Moreover, these Rumans mostly live in a com- 
pact mass in contact with the Rumanian king- 
dom. According to the Hungarian census of 
1910 more than five-sixths of the Rumanian 
population of Hungary lived either in Tran- 
silvania — of the 15 Transilvanian counties, eight 
had a Rumanian majority of 64 to 8g per cent., 
four a substantial minority of from 35 to 48 per 
cent., while three (Udvarhely, Csik and Haromszek) 
were purely Szekler (Magyar) — or in the four 
adjoining counties of Krasso-Szoremy (72 'i per 
cent.), Szilagy (59*1 per cent.), Arad (57 'Si per 
cent.), and Temes (34 per cent.). Rumania 
" beyond the Carpathians " is, therefore, a com- 
pact country, geographically united with the 
kingdom. 

Unable to deny, while they seek to minimise, 
the Rumanian majority in Transilvania and the 
adjoining counties, Hungarian and other anti- 
Rumanian controversial writers fall back on 
two main lines of argument : — (i) That the Ru- 
mans are intruders of much later date than the 
Magyars. (2) That there is no " irredentist " 
problem, and that the non-Magyar nationalities 
have no reason or wish to be separated from 
Hungary. The first is a much less important 
point than the second, and can be more quickly 
dismissed. 

To us modern Europeans and Americans it 
appears a matter of little import what nation 

5 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

has medieval or earlier history on its side in 
claiming certain territories. But Hungarian 
writers have laid great stress on the fact that 
their occupation of Transilvania, the Banat, &c., 
preceded that of the " Vlach " (or Ruman) 
population by three or four centuries. There 
are little or no contemporary records extant, 
and we are forced to speculate from such evi- 
dence as we have. All that is known for certain 
is that the Magyars did not begin to occupy 
Transilvania till the loth century. In the 12th 
century began the systematic introduction by 
the Hungarian kings of the Saxon colonists 
who built up the prosperous communities of 
Siebenbiirgen (Kronstadt, Hermannstadt; Klau- 
senburg, &c.). According to Hungarian conten- 
tions, " Vlach shepherds " only began to filter 
into Transilvania during the Middle Ages (14th 
and 15th centuries), and are thus " intruders " 
in Magyar lands. Such a contention, however, 
does not explain who were the pre-*Magyar 
inhabitants of the province of whose existence, 
side by side with the invaders, there are plentiful 
indications. It does not explain the great number 
of place names of Rumanian origin. Finally, 
on this theory, it is quite inexplicable how, in 
spite of oppression and suppression for centuries, 
the Rumans of Hungary should now be in a great 
majority in Transilvania and the adjoining 
counties. 

Neither Mag37ars nor Saxons make nor can 
make any claim to have been in Transil\'ania 

6 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

before the loth century. Rightty or wrongly, 
the Rumans do make this claim very emphatically. 
Ethnological and linguistic evidence supports the 
theory that they are in the main a blend of two 
races — the original Dacian people of Transilvania 
and Wallachia, whom Trajan conquered at the 
beginning of the 2nd century, and the Romans 
and Romanised Thracians and Illyrians who 
were partly settled there by the Roman emperors 
as colonists, but to a still larger extent drifted 
in as traders and settlers. The sole criterion 
of nationality worth respecting is that of con- 
sciousness of a certain origin and tradition. This 
the Rumans of Hungary possess very strongly. 
The old Roman names — Traian, Aurelian, Oc- 
tavian, Titu, Valeriu, Severin, &c. — are frequent 
amongst them. Almost equal respect is paid to 
their Dacian ancestry. In his tragedy, " Ovidiu " 
[the poet Ovid, who was banished to and died 
at Tomi, near Constantsa], the great Rumanian 
poet, Vasile Alecsandri, insists that Dacia was 
a worth}/ foe even for Rome. If history and 
historical consciousness are appealed to, there 
is ever^^thing to be said for the Rumanian and 
very little for the Magyar claim. 

But let us turn from such academic arguments 
to contemporary facts. We have seen that in 
•Transilvania and the adjoining counties of Hun- 
gary the Rumans form a great majority of the 
population. During the many centuries of Hun- 
garian rule this majority has been systematically 
ill-treated and denied its rights. In the princi- 

7 

B 2 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

pality of Transilvania — both in its medieval and 
its Turkish (1526-1691) period — the Ruman popu- 
lation was denied the civil and religious privileges 
granted to the dominant Magyar and German 
population. When in 1691 the Habsburg suc- 
ceeded the Turk as the suzerain of Transilvania, 
the Emperor Leopold I granted the principality 
a diploma guaranteeing the continuance of its 
distinctive privileges. No proper provision was 
made, however, to safeguard the Rumanian 
majority, and the result was growing unrest 
throughout the i8th century, culminating in the 
peasant revolt led by Horea in 1784 and the 
petition called " Supplex Libellus Valachorum " 
laid before the Emperor Leopold II in 1791. 
Maria Theresa and her sons — Joseph II and 
Leopold II — were on the whole benevolently 
disposed to their Rumanian subjects, but they 
encountered every hindrance to reform in the 
close corporation of three " nations " — Magyars, 
Szeklers (racially one with the Magyars), and 
Germans— who composed the Transilvanian Diet. 
It was their opposition which prevented Joseph II 
from raising the Rumanian " nation " to the 
same status. But there was worse in store. The 
year 1848 with its universal movement of revolt 
inspired the Rumans to a great national demon- 
stration at Blaj (Blasendorf). In no sense anti- 
dynastic, this assembly demanded for the Rumans 
equal rights with the other " nations " of Tran- 
silvania. The Magyars took alarm. The Hun- 
garian Diet had already earlier in the year voted 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

at Pressburg the union of Transilvania with 
Hungary. The Transilvanian Diet was forced 
by the predominant Magyar element to do hke- 
wise, and the Ruman population had no means 
except by the demonstration just mentioned to 
record their protest. The Magyar insurrection 
and its suppression the following year annulled 
the Act of Union. For a decade, old conditions 
returned. At last, in 1863, the Transilvanian 
Diet agreed to the recognition of the Rumans as 
a " nation." But two years later the same Diet, 
under extreme pressure from Budapest, overrode 
the protests of the Saxon and Rumanian repre- 
sentatives and voted union with Hungary. After 
his defeat by Prussia, Francis Joseph was com- 
pelled to agree to this as to other Hungarian 
demands, and in 1867 the Hungarian Parliament 
legalised and regulated the union. 

The half-century which followed has seen 
Transilvania under purely Magyar rule. It is 
true the great Hungarian statesmen, Eotvos and 
Deak, had favoured a policy of conciliation of the 
other nationalities, and the Nationalities Law of 
1868 provided glowing promises of the fair treat- 
ment of the non-Magyar nationalities. Unfor- 
tunately most of its promises have bee?, ignored 
or deliberately broken. Hungarian has not only 
been made the ofhcial language, but is forced on 
Rumanian schools and churches. The Rumans 
can secure no teaching of their own language in 
the State schools, which they are generally obliged 
to support, and can only keep their language alive 

9 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

by maintaining additional Church schools at their 
own expense. Even these schools the Hungarian 
Government, especially since Count Apponyi's 
education laws of 1907, has been engaged in 
Magyarising. Hardly a voice has been raised 
among the Magyars in favour of a fairer and 
saner policy, and in the Hungarian Parliament 
repeated and unanimous demands have been 
made for the enforcement of a ruthless policy 
of Magyarisation in defiance of even the limited 
privileges accorded the Rumans by the law of 
1868. 

Politically, the Rumans have been almost 
unrepresented. They have not even enjoyed 
the restricted franchise accorded to the Magyar 
population, and the franchise is especially 
narrow in Transilvania. In Rumanian districts 
the electoral boundaries are drawn in such a way 
as to diminish as far as possible the weight of 
the Rumanian vote. The Rumanian elector finds 
in many cases that the polls are almost inaccessible 
to him. Not content with this the Hungarian 
authorities have resorted to every method of 
terrorisation and corruption — methods exempli- 
iied to the full in the last general elections of 1910,* 
.at which the Hungarian Government pleaded that 
it " only " employed 194 battalions of infantry 
and 114 squadrons of cavalry. Cynics may 
congratulate the Budapest authorities on the 
decisive victory obtained with these " small " 

* Fully described in R. W. Seton- Watson's " Corruption 
and Reform in Hungary." 

10 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

forces; for only eight representatives of non- 
Magyar nationality were returned to the House 
of [413] Representatives, although — according to 
the Hungarian census of that year there were 
only 10,050,575 Magyars in Hungary out of a 
total population [excluding Croatia and Slavonia] 
of 18,217,918. Exactly five members of the 
Rumanian National Party (and two other non- 
Nationalist Rumanians) were returned, though 
on a proportional basis there should be at least 
sixty-nine [and as the Hungarian census returns 
are certainly falsified, nearer eighty]. What would 
the world say if the British Government only 
allowed four Irish Home Rulers instead of eighty- 
five to sit in the House of Commons ? Yet the 
Rumans form between a sixth and a fifth of the 
total population of Hungary, whereas the Irish 
(including Ulster Unionists) are about a tenth 
of the total population of the British Isles. 

The Rumanian National Party has had to 
face many storms of persecution. Founded in 
1881, it from the first pleaded for equal and 
democratic treatment of all Hungarian subjects, 
for the execution of existing laws, the use of the 
Rumanian language in Rumanian districts, the 
restoration of autonomy to Transilvania, and 
the introduction if possible of manhood suffrage. 
Failing to obtain any hearing for their cause, the 
party in 1892 attempted to petition King Francis 
Joseph directly. The Hungarian Premier pre- 
vented them from obtaining access to the Throne, 
and the publication of the petition brought down 

II 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

on the heads of the authors a long array of 
sentences of imprisonment. Undeterred by per- 
secution, the Rumanian Nationahsts have con- 
tinued their struggle for fair and equal treatment. 
In 1906 they secured the return of 14 members 
to the Hungarian House of Representatives, but 
four years later the Magyar authorities saw to 
it that the numbers were reduced by corrup- 
tion and intimidation to five. Meanwhile the 
Rumanian press was systematically threatened, 
suppressed and sentenced. Between 1884 and 
1894 there were at least 40 trials of editors and 
journalists. Almost every paper in turn has been 
suppressed. Since 1914 the regime of terrorisation 
has been intensified. Papers like Romdnul and 
Poporul romdn of Arad, and at least eight other 
papers which supported the national claims, were 
suppressed between August i, 1914, and May 21, 
1916. Others, like Gazeta Transilvaniei, have 
been taken over and used by the Hungarian 
Government. A long list could be given of 
Transilvanian journalists, writers, and professional 
men who have taken refuge in the kingdom of 
Rumania — headed by the poet and dramatist, 
Octavian Goga, who in one of his plays, " Domnul 
Notar," has admirably shown up the way elections 
are conducted or misconducted in Hungary. 
Rumania is at present full of Transilvanian 
refugees, priests, professors, journalists and other 
well-educated men who have given up in despair 
any hope of securing justice and recognition of 
their rights in Hungary. General Dragalina, who 

12 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

commanded the Rumanian First Army at the 
battle of Targul-Jiu last October, but was killed 
ere the victory was won, was a Rumanian from 
the Banat, trained in the Austro-Hungarian Army. 
Since 1914 the policy of the Magyar Govern- 
ment has become increasingly intransigeant. 
Freedom of speech and action has ceased to exist. 
The Rumans have lost enormous numbers fighting 
in Galicia, in Russia, on the Isonzo. So the 
Magyars hope to " settle " the Rumanian Question 
by extermination of the Rumans. Last August 
the Hungarian Government forced the Rumanian 
Orthodox Church to elect as its new Metropolitan 
a certain Vasile Mangra, who abandoned some 
years ago his national principles for the hope 
— soon realised — of preferment. Professions of 
loyalty are being extorted from the Rumanian 
clergy, teachers and parliamentary representatives, 
who are compelled to forswear their principles 
in order to protect their fellow-Rumans' lives 
and property. Recent debates in the Hungarian 
House of Representatives have, however, given 
the lie to these professions. In reply to inter- 
pellations the Hungarian Minister of Justice, 
Balogh, admitted that a great part of the Ruman 
population had " traitorously " helped the in- 
vading Rumanian armies. Balogh promised 
severe punishment of these offences. Already 
1,000 sentences of imprisonment and 600 of 
confiscation of property have been inflicted {Pester 
Lloyd, March loth). Pesti Naplo recently an- 
nounced the formation of a new and more docile 

13 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

Rumanian party under Mangra ! Pesti Hirlap, 
of February 14th, coolly informs the Rumans of 
Hungary that they are not a nationality, but 
merely Ruman-Magyars, and henceforth must all 
learn Magyar. So much for the Law of Nation- 
ahties of 1868 ! 



Rumania and the Cause of Democracy 
AND Freedom. 

We have seen that there are few better 
instances of a clear-cut issue between right and 
wrong, justice and injustice, oligarchic tyranny 
and democratic aspirations, than between the 
Magyar rulers and the Ruman oppressed subjects 
of Eastern Hungary. For decades their liberation 
has been the dream and hope of their brethren 
in the Rumanian kingdom. King Charles had 
hoped to attain their emancipation by friendly 
agreement with Hungary and Prussia. But his 
long reign (1866-19 14) coincided with the in- 
creasing and unabashed persecution of the Rumans 
of Hungary. The hope of peaceful settlement 
gradually melted away and every Rumanian was 
beginning to realise that sooner or later freedom 
must be won by the sword. The European War 
offered at last an opportunity which could not 
be lost. For two years Rumania was forced to 
wait — not in order, as has been ignorantly stated, 
to " rush to the succour of the victors " — but 
for the moment when, her own military arrange- 
ments improved, she could shed the blood of 

14 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

her sons with some hope, though at frightful 
risk, of dehvering her oppressed brethren. Even 
August 1916 was, as events have proved, too 
soon. But Rumania has at least played the 
heroic part of facing great risks and enduring 
great suffering for an ideal — the union of the 
Rumanian race and the cause of democratic 
progress and national freedom. 

For the issues at stake were not merely 
Transilvania, the Banat, Bukovina. With the 
question of liberating the Rumans of Austria- 
Hungary and uniting them in a " Great Rumania " 
was bound up the future of democracy and freedom 
in Rumania itself. As we have seen, the Rumans 
of Hungary are socially and politically democrats. 
They are hard-working, intelligent and keenly 
alive to and eager for the progress of education 
and self-governing institutions, for the maintenance 
of which they have had to pay in money and tears. 
They are dour because they have had to fight 
a dominant race, and thrifty because only by 
thrift could they meet the double charges laid 
on them by the State and voluntarily undertaken 
by themselves to maintain their own churches 
and schools. Their incorporation in the kingdom 
of Rumania must be— and the fact is universally 
admitted— a great asset for the cause of progress 
and democracy. 

Political and social conditions in Rumania 
to-day are by no means perfect, and there are 
few Rumanians who would not frankly admit 
the fact. Rumania is politically a very young 

15 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

country. The medieval State, in which under 
Turkish suzerainty the two PrincipaHties of 
Wallachia and Moldavia had remained up till 
1830, offered little chance of political education 
to the bulk of the Rumanian people. The 
country was ruled, in consultation with two 
Divans of boeri (great landed proprietors), by 
princes nominated by the Porte for seven years. 
From 1711-1821 these princes were generally 
of Constantinopolitan Greek extraction. Many of 
them were honest and well-intentioned, but the 
system automatically produced widespread cor- 
ruption and unjust exploitation of the native 
inhabitants. Greek ecclesiastical foundations held 
a great part of the land, and the rest was the 
property of boeri, who held the peasant in a state 
of villenage, working for them so many days of 
the year in return for the right to enjoy a small 
percentage of what was produced. These peasants 
had no political rights. The revolution of 1848 
introduced a new atmosphere of democracy, but 
the peasants were too uneducated to take advan- 
tage of the moment. It was Alexander Cuza, 
first prince of the United Principalities (1859- 
1866), who took the first practical steps to allevi- 
ate their lot. By arbitrary means he forced on 
an apathetic legislature laws reforming the land, 
franchise, and education questions. The Church 
was largely de-Hellenised and to a large extent 
expropriated, schools were introduced, and a 
measure of manhood suffrage was carried. Most 
important of all, a considerable portion of land 

t6 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

was given over to the peasants to hold in their 
own right. To save them from the clutches of 
usurers and land-grabbers they were forbidden 
by law to alienate their properties for 50 years. 
The period was up in 1914, but the European War 
has temporarily lengthened it. 

Out-and-out Liberals have always felt that 
these reforms were not enough. To begin with, 
though the suffrage was universal it was not equal. 
Voters were divided into three colleges on a 
basis of wealth and education, and illiterate 
peasants were only allowed to vote through repre- 
sentatives of each village commune. The great 
peasant population of the country had therefore 
no adequate means of making its voice heard. 
Wise and good ruler as the late King Charles 
was, he inherited from his Prussian blood and 
upbringing an instinctive dread of democracy, 
and of the rule of the uneducated masses, and 
found in the three-college system a parallel to 
the far more antiquated and less justified three- 
class system of Prussia. Again the peasants had 
a legitimate grievance over the land question. 
As population increased, the land grants of 1864 
became more and more strikingly inadequate, 
and the unrest found expression in the peasants' 
revolts of 1888 and 1907. It was generally 
recognised that the situation must be taken in 
hand before long, but party politics and vested 
interests postponed a thorough settlement. Only 
the imminence of intervention in the war pre- 
vented a full discussion of the question in the 

17 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

parliamentary session of 191 6. The war has, 
however, shown that anomahes that might once 
be excused can no longer be tolerated. Not 
only Liberals and Conservative Democrats, but 
even patriotic Conservatives like the late Nicolae 
Filipescu assented to the future introduction of 
equal suffrage, for he knew that with it was bound 
up the Transilvanian question. On December 22nd 
last, when the Rumanian Parliament met in 
lashi (Jassy), the King emphasised the fact in 
his speech. 

" The peasants should know that they are 
fighting for national unity in a battle for political 
and economic freedom. Their valour gives them 
still stronger rights to the soil they have been 
defending, and imposes on us more strongly than 
ever the duty of carrying through when the war 
is over the agrarian and electoral reforms on 
the basis of which this representative assembly 
was elected." In an address to his troops early 
in April, the King reaffirmed the promise of 
" the grant of land and political rights." 

With agrarian and franchise reform is bound 
up the Jewish question. There are to-day some- 
thing like 300,000 Jews in Rumania, for the most 
part in Moldavia. They immigrated there in 
two big waves — after the Polish partitions (1772- 
1795) and after the Treaty of Adrianople (1829). 
Keenly alive to commercial and industrial under- 
takings, they soon absorbed most of the trade 
of the principality. Their higher level of educa- 
tion and business talent qualified them to control 

18 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

the whole economic Ufe of the country. Add 
to this that their natural language was German, 
or Yiddish, and it will be understood that even 
quite fair-minded Rumanians might well dread 
and seek to thwart their triumphal progress. 
The Jews have accordingly been hampered and 
hindered in their civic life. While they have to 
serve in the army, they could not obtain com- 
missioned rank in it — an unjustifiable disability 
to which Jews in the Prussian army are also 
subjected. They were prevented from entering 
the legal profession or obtaining any Government 
post. Heavy restrictions were placed on their 
residence in the country villages, where formerly 
they had owned the inns and taverns and acted 
as middlemen and moneylenders. Above all, in 
spite of the stipulations of the Treaty of Berlin, 
the Rumanian Government refused to facilitate 
for Jews the acquisition of citizenship. They 
could only be naturalised individually by Act 
of the Rumanian Parliament — a difficult and in- 
vidious distinction. Patriotic Rumanian Jews 
have rightly resented these disabilities. Moderate 
and thoughtful Rumanian opinion is on their 
side. There is not the faintest doubt that 
agrarian and franchise reform will be followed 
by relief for the Jews. The lashi correspondent 
of the London Morning Post (April 7) learns 
" from an authoritative Rumanian source that 
the lashi Government proposes to grant full 
political and civil rights to the Jews." Rumanian 
Jews have shed their blood side by side with 

19 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

their Christian fellow-countrymen in this war. 
The Jews of Hungary, whom the Magyars 
for political reasons have always favoured, 
must find equal treatment for themselves and 
their co-racials in the new kingdom of Great 
Rumania. With the extension of the franchise 
there will no longer be a danger of the Jewish 
vote exercising an undue influence, and Ru- 
manian Jews will have a splendid chance of 
building up the temporarily shattered prosperity 
of the country. The Rumanian peasant is natur- 
ally the most tolerant of men. In Rumania 
and Rumanian-Hungary Orthodox, Uniat, Roman 
Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Jew, Armenian, 
Gipsy, Tatar, Turk live contentedly side by 
side. Moldavia and Dobrogea have served as 
havens of refuge for the various heretics — 
Skoptsy and Molokany and other such fanatics — 
who have in the past found life in the Russian 
Empire intolerable. Impartial observers — in- 
cluding Jewish observers — have admitted the 
innate tolerance of the Rumanian peasant. 
Anti- Jewish legislation in the past has been due 
pre-eminently to social and political reasons 
which will no longer obtain in an enlarged and 
democratised Rumania. The Jew will be ad- 
mitted to the full privileges of the Rumanian 
citizen. In return the Rumanian Jews will find 
it both their privilege and their duty to identify 
their interests still more fully with those of the 
country, and rebut for ever natural, if largely 
unjustified, charges that they are in sympathy 

20 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

with Germany rather than with their Rumanian 
fatherland. 



Rumania's International Position. 

The defects in the constitutional and social 
condition of contemporary Rumania, to which we 
have alluded, are the defects not of a decadent 
but of an immature political community. Like 
Russia, Rumania has not yet fully entered into 
the European heritage of which barbarian 
tyranny and lack of connection with the Latin 
and Anglo-Saxon worlds have so long deprived 
her. It is a frequent accusation of the press 
of the Central Powers against Rumania that she 
is a thoroughly decadent and disunited Power. 
(It is interesting to remember that down to 
1913 German writers were accustomed to 
point with pride to Rumania as a splendidly 
organised State on the Prussian model, with its 
large German community and flourishing German 
schools.) The Bulgarian press is proud of con- 
trasting the free, democratic Bulgarian nation — 
the foreign policy of which recent events have 
shown to be entirely in the hands of its foreign 
Tsar and his nominees — with the Rumanian, 
composed as it is of selfish and corrupt boyars 
and an oppressed and unenlightened peasantry. 
The Hungarian Socialist organ, Nepszava, has 
repeatedly declaimed against the medievalism 
and feudalism and Byzantinism of Rumanian 
public life, and encouraged the Magyar and 

. 21 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

non-Magyar masses to forget their own grievances 
and vent their enthusiasm against absolutism 
on the pubHc foe. Not very long ago the 
Frankfurter Zeitung wrote a highly-coloured 
picture of the deplorable conditions in Rumania, 
and represented the German conquerors as liber- 
ators and apostles of freedom. We have seen 
how much and how little justification there is 
for charges, which, even if justified, it would ill 
become Rumania's enemies to make. Rumanian 
political and social life is ultra-modern if compared 
with the reactionarism and oligarchism which 
obtain in Hungary. As for Prussia — in Rumania 
as in Russia, Prussia's best, if not her only, friends, 
were to be found among the very boyars and 
exploiters of the people whom she so self- 
righteously abuses. It is true that German 
capital and German science have powerfully 
helped in the development of modern Rumania — 
not out of altruism, but as a good commercial 
speculation. But what sympathy or help has 
Germany given to the growth of democratic 
feeling and cultural development there ? It is 
from France and Italy that Rumanians have 
drawn their political and spiritual inspiration. 
From Berlin and Vienna they received little but 
trade wares, political loans, and diplomatic 
instructions. 

In Rumania's fight for freedom the economic 
side is not unimportant. Just as in Italy, just 
as in Russia, so in Rumania, German economic 
expansion, set in motion in the '8o's by Bismarck, 

22 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

passed gradually into political control of the 
country. Not only the trade but the finances of 
Rumania soon became predominantly the sphere 
of German banks such as the Deutsche Bank 
and the Disconto Gesellschaft. The Entente 
Powers apathetically allowed Germany to enmesh 
Rumania financially, and with German finance 
goes hand-in-hand German foreign policy. A 
German victory or a " drawn " war would mean 
the complete political and economic subjection 
of Rumania to the Central Powers. 

Like Italy, Rumania had no choice but to 
be the ally or enemy of Austria-Hungary. There 
were such acute differences between the two 
neighbouring States — over Transilvania in especial 
— that they must be settled or postponed by 
war or alliance. The alliance concluded secretly 
in 1883 between Rumania and the Germanic 
Empires was the sole alternative to a disastrous 
war. As the Rumanian Declaration of War on' 
Austria-Hungary explained, " Rumania," in con- 
cluding the Treaty of 1883, " saw in the relations 
of friendships and alliance which were established 
between the three Great Powers a precious 
pledge for her domestic tranquillity, as well as 
for the improvement of the lot of the Rumanians 
of Austria-Hungary." In the course of three 
decades she found, however, that not only had 
she thrown in her lot with Powers whose policy 
and political principles ran counter to her own, 
but had not even by doing so saved the Rumans 
of Hungary from continued persecution. Like 

23 



THE JUSTICE OF RUMANIA'S CAUSE 

Italy, Rumania was not the sinner but the sinned 
against in the matter of treaties. Just as Austria- 
Hungary's Balkan policy, aggressive and pan- 
German, broke the spirit of the alliance with 
Italy, so was it also with Rumania. If again, the 
flagrant and continued oppression of the Rumans 
of Hungary could not be mitigated by friendly 
representations and political help from the neigh- 
bouring kingdom, then it must be settled by the 
sword. " The bribes that these two eminently 
sordid Governments exacted as their price for 
entering the war " — to return to the New York 
World's criticism — -were nothing more nor less 
than the demand that the Powers of the Entente 
who have proclaimed that they are championing 
the principle of nationality and the rights of 
small peoples should apply their general principles 
to the salient case of the Rumanians of Austria- 
Hungary. The States now lighting the battle 
of Civilisation and Christianity should only be 
proud that included in their program is a demand 
so clearly justified by history, by equity, and by 
common-sense. Grievously as she suffered for 
her ideal, Rumania, through the mouth of her 
king and foremost men, has proclaimed her 
belief that it was " worth while," and that she 
does not regret it. She has risked all for Justice 
and Freedom, let justice- and freedom be her 
reward. 



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